Math Anxiety, Math Fatigue, Math...What Else?!

Some students readily admit their aversion to the subject, proclaiming to have a proclivity for different school subjects. This anxiety towards math often begins in childhood, as early as first grade, and is compounded through one's personal history of negative experiences in math classes. 

If your child is struggling in math class, you might find yourself thinking, "Why do they have to do this at all? Math is clearly not their thing!" However, math is not something that we can just opt out of. It is the best tool humans possess to develop the brain and a strong background in math is helpful for any career, whether or not math is used on a day-to-day basis. 

How can parents help break this vicious circle and eliminate math anxiety, avoid math fatigue, and infuse joy into your child's relationship with math? Here are some things you can do to help:

1. Evaluate your attitude towards math.Take a moment to consider whether your own previously formed notions about math are affecting your child. While this is probably the hardest task of all, learning to like all these shapes, patterns, fractions, and probabilities can help open your child’s mind to embracing math with a positive attitude. Find ways to get excited by a new equation, an unexpected graph, or a new way to solve a problem.

2. Learn to enjoy doing math with your child. Make math homework time fun by laughing at mistakes, admiring a correct solution, and finding the joy in looking for a different solution.

3. Encourage your child's questions and try to avoid answering them directly. Instead, ask them more questions to see if you can help them find the solution. If you don't know the answer, look for it together.

4. Allow time for thinking and elaborating on "long" questions and problems. Do not expect your child to get the answer right away, give them the time to think it through.

5. Learn to see and do math anywhere and everywhere you go together. Compare roof triangles, admire straight light rays coming through the clouds, examine close-to-perfect carrot cubes on the kitchen chopping board, and more! 

The younger your child is, the quicker you will see the changes that your own attitude towards math will have on them. With these steps, math fatigue and math anxiety will become a thing of the past in your household.

This blog was previously published in 2016 and has since been updated.